The Dalloul Artist Collective launches its curatorial programme with The Escape to Joy, a solo exhibition dedicated to the Lebanese painter Fawzi Baalbaki. On view at Stone Gardens – a landmark building by architect Lina Ghotmeh – the exhibition situates DAC’s inaugural gesture within a structure shaped by memory, material, and care. Ghotmeh’s hand-combed concrete façade, evoking the stratified surface of Beirut, becomes the skin against which Baalbaki’s luminous canvases unfold.
Featuring over 50 recent works, The Escape to Joy reflects a lifelong practice shaped by political resistance, emotional endurance, and a restless search for clarity. Curated by the artist’s sons, Ayman and Said Baalbaki, the show revisits and reanimates a visual vocabulary first developed in 1980s Paris, an expressive synthesis of figuration, colour, and calligraphic line. In this deeply personal presentation, abstract gestures carry symbolic weight: war, displacement, and survival pulse beneath surfaces that radiate joy.
Alongside the paintings, the exhibition includes a focussed archival display; early sketches and rare portraits by Abdelhamid Baalbaki and Serwan Baran, and sculptural studies that ground the artist’s evolving language in decades of creative and political movement. Two films accompany the exhibition; one of them being a short film by Ali Baalbaki – grandson of Said Baalbaki – which adds an intergenerational lens to this unfolding narrative of memory and renewal.
The Escape to Joy marks the beginning of DAC’s exhibition programme, foregrounding the organisation’s commitment to legacy, dialogue, and the evolving presence of Arab artists across generations.
Location: Dalloul Artist Collective (DAC) Headquarters, Beirut, Lebanon
Date: 4 July until 29 August 2025 | Monday to Friday, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM